Shuryard has launched the Real-World References page. Enjoy it while it's short, because it's inevitably going to become the largest page on the UESP.

There's plenty of uncontroversial stuff to add, so let the free for all begin. I just caution you to follow this general rule: if there's any doubt in your mind that what you want to add is appropriate, there is no doubt that you should take it to the talk page first.

Our top news of the day: a big welcome back to The Silencer! He may be in the top ten for all-time edits on the site, but what really matters to me is having another cranky old gamer around to keep all you whippersnappers in your place.

I don't mean to diminish the incredible Ranks and Hierarchy of the Daedra, the new addition to the Loremaster's Archive released earlier today. This is so awesome, in so many ways ... there really are no words.

I lost my card and had to get it replaced. Without any warning, my ESO Imperial Edition preorder was canceled, and I was not allowed to reinstate it. No call or email, no reasonable time for me to update the order, just poof, gone. "No Imperial Edition for you; would you like a $10 gift card to go with that kick to the balls?" I didn't know I could be this angry over a video game without a corrupt save file being involved. But in keeping with the theme of this blog, I'm going to remain silent on which incompetent retail chain is responsible. Not that I have to; think "incompetent retail chain", and they're probably what come to mind nowadays.

There are so many things to say about the last ten days, it's mind-boggling, and I do have to highlight a couple. I mean, Skyrim was free for a weekend, there was an ESO console beta, an ESO Live, GStaff posted the best ESO screenshot yet, and a new Crown Store Showcase was just released. And on the UESP, editors are just ripping through the site like tsunamis. Edit - and Shuryard became a full-fledged Patroller!!!

But let's see, anything else, any other gigantic events in the TES community since last time which deserve notice ... hmm, nope. Pretty status quo. Just glad to have the Silencer back. :)

There is a TON of misinformation out there involving paid mods. I'd like to take this opportunity to do a sort of FAQ to clear some of them up.

Q: Is Bethesda allowed to do this? Don't I own my mod?

A: Bethesda isn't forcing you to charge for your mod. That being said, Bethesda owns the copyright to all things created in the Creation Kit or intended to enter their games. This is what you skipped past when you click agree on the EULA. Therefore, it is perfectly legal for them to take a cut of what you make if you choose to charge for your mod.

Q: Can't someone just take the mod I've released for free and put it up on the workshop for money?

A: They can, just like they could have taken your independent film you created and charged people money to watch it. In this, and that, case, you can file a Takedown request using Valve's easy form. This is the same form that you would use if someone releases your paid mod for free, or even claims your free mod as their own and puts it up for free as well. It is extremely easy to prosecute someone doing this because they are required to provide contact, bank, and tax information in order to get a paid mod approved. Anyone profiting from your work can easily be found. No more anonymous theft!

Q: Any money I might make is given to me in Steam Wallet funds, not actual money. How do I pay my rent with Steam Wallet funds?!?

A: No idea where this rumor got started. You are paid using an Electronic Funds Transfer into the bank account of your choosing. In fact, you have to go through some pretty extensive tax and bank disclosure just to get a mod approved for sale. Because of this, they will only pay in US dollars, and not in Steam Wallet funds.

Q: If I buy a mod with money, and get a refund, it goes into my Steam Wallet and not my bank account! How is that fair?

A: You are only able to buy mods with Steam Wallet funds in the first place, so if you do buy a mod and get a refund, the money is coming from your Steam Wallet, and is going back into it as well.

Q: What if someone releases a paid mod that requires another mod?

A: If anyone releases any mod on Steam, paid or otherwise, that requires the use of another mod, or even uses assets from that mod, they are required by Valve to receive permission from the original creator of the assets before they release it. If someone has used your assets and didn't ask your permission, and you are annoyed about it, feel free to contact the author of the mod, or file a Takedown request.

Q: What if someone charges unreasonable amounts for an essential mod?

A: Valve and Bethesda reserve the right to lower or even eliminate the fee on a mod prior to it being published, so if they are charging $200 for almost nothing, it won't get released at that price.

Q: Valve only gives us 25%, that's so low!!!!!

A: Yes, 25% is very low in terms of the amount the mod authors receive, but this has nothing to do with Valve. Valve's information states that the amount that the mod author receives out of the overall price shall be determined by the Publisher, not by Valve, so blame Bethesda for only giving you 25%!

Q: They should just create a donation system!

A: They are way ahead of you. Along with setting a specific price for a mod, the author can chose to set the price as "pay-what-you-want" allowing the downloader to decide what they want to pay. This is essentially a donation system, and if every mod author chooses this, everyone would be much happier!

If you have any further questions, feel I missed something, or would like the specific spots where I got the answers to these questions, feel free to contact me!

The first of two volumes in the Tales of Tamriel set came out yesterday, and I thought I'd describe what it's like in person. In case you haven't heard of it, this is a compilation of lorebooks from ESO; the entirety of it is text that you can read in-game (or on our wiki!). Skyrim will have a similar set, containing three volumes.

So here's a brief description of it:

The Cover: This is a hardcover volume. The cover itself has a smooth, soft sort of feel, the logo is embossed, and the text and design around the edge are shiny silver - pretty high quality. That brown stripe that you see in the above image is something along the lines of a dust cover I think, rather than just being something to throw away; the text and image on it are glossy. Here's what the book looks like without it:

The Content: This volume focuses on the three Alliances and their homelands, as well as some creatures; it contains both books and also some journals and the like. A table of contents for this volume can be found here, on the wiki. The text is as it appears in-game. It's in a decent, readable font too; that's one thing I like: the font in the Improved Emperor's Guide to Tamriel, which came with the collector's edition of ESO, was made to look like it was handwritten, and it's somewhat difficult to read (nigh impossible, compared to other font, for a while after I first had eye surgery) and I appreciate this being a more regular font.

So much to read!

The Images: The book has illustrations on nearly every page. While we've seen some of them before in concept art, and wallpapers, and so forth, the majority are brand-new. There are both sketches and colored images.

All in all, it's a nice, high-quality collector's item for those who are fond of the lore and who want a physical copy.

Real-world references?
You may have noticed that we don't really do trivia on the UESP much. Sometimes there's a note on a gamespace page, and very rarely a blurb about something in the Notes sections of lore pages. But by and large, most active contributors aren't interested in maintaining that stuff, and it's typically speculative assertions which just weaken the credibility of the pages overall. If you see something on a typical UESP page, we want you to be able to take it as fact, and that can be hard to do when you see a bunch of speculative trivia all over the place. It can be very hard to agree on these things, and we get enough grief over on the Easter Egg pages.

But now, we're talking about making one big page for all real-world references in TES. The kind of stuff we don't typically allow on the lore pages, like, say, similarities between Norse and Nordic culture. If you're interested in such a project, keep track of the conversation here and maybe let us know what you think.

Catch-up
I've got a backlog of stuff I've forgotten to mention, and missed a whole lot of activity on the UESP recently I'll try to catch up on. In the community, Lady Nerevar tabulated the total word count of in-game books in the TES series at just over one million. By comparison, the King James Bible reportedly comes in at about 788,000 words. On the forums, the user Alodar came up with an algorithm for exploring Daggerfall dungeons. Don't know how well it works, but I thought it was a neat idea.

Obviously, the biggest news recently has been the Welcome Back Weekend. This was directly aimed at people like me, who played the beta but didn't buy/subscribe to the game. It was fantastic to get my hands on ESO again, albeit not for as long as I would've liked. I was already pretty familiar with changes to the game, but the free weekend still helped me to come to some important conclusions.

First, while my laptop can technically run ESO, a toddler can technically stage a sit-in protest. I've waited this long, I can wait another month and a half for the console release so I can have the TES experience I want. And if they push back the console release again, I'll just take up crack.

Second, rp-ing as a mentally ill beggar is a totally viable playstyle. When you first step into Daggerfall, it's practically encouraged. I wandered around in raggedy clothing, sleeping behind buildings, threatening bards, stealing, killing anyone who shined the wrong color etc. I look forward to taking an Argonian beggar into Cyrodiil to see how that goes...

Third, I've picked my faction. I mean, I'll play all the factions, but you can only have one main character, you know? And that's gotta be the Daggerfall Covenant. I loved my time in Morrowind during the beta, and I imagine that the Aldmeri Dominion will have all the most brand-new interesting places, but the Daggerfall Covenant has a nice blend of both old and new. More importantly, it has something neither of the other factions ever will: Roy. Roy, whose unforgivable murder in a swamp must be solved. I didn't know Roy in life, but he must have been a saint on Tamriel. Of all the dead bodies I came across and created during my time there, his was the only one anyone seemed to care about. He is survived by his dog Giblets, who my mentally ill beggar tried to eat, but that's beside the point. Roy must be avenged. ROOOOY!!!

Transcription Errors
Unfortunately, not every so-called transcription error is evidence of a Dragon Break. And most of them are our fault. You see, oftentimes, books will get some grammar changes and other tweaks from game to game, and despite our best efforts, they haven't always been transcribed 100% correctly due to reliance on bots (or, worse still, humans). This was especially true in the transition from Daggerfall to Morrowind.

Jeancey, Jimeee, and to a much lesser extent, myself and the rest of the internet, have been combing through these books to try and make sure all the pages are being transcluded properly to each namespace. I've seen errors fixed recently that go back to Oblivion and even before!

Salache, Boiche, Moriche
Most of the time, if there's been a transcription error, it's some small grammar tweak only wiki-gnomes would notice or care about. But occasionally, it's something more significant. In the Daggerfall version of The Wild Elves, three names are given for the elven races: "Salache (or High), Boiche (or Wood), and Moriche (or Dark)". In Morrowind and beyond, these were changed to Altmer, Bosmer, and Dunmer respectively, but no one here seemed to notice (or if they did notice, didn't care to change it). Many thanks to the folks over at Classic Elder Scrolls for pointing this out. By the way, there's a new episode of Classic Mark, Classic Elder Scrolls recording right now! Redguard's a helluva drug.

Anyway, since the lore page was never updated, and all the new namespaces for the last eight years have been exhibiting the Daggerfall version of the text, we have been inadvertently introducing the Daggerfall text into the Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim namespaces. We have gotten better about checking these things over the years, so I doubt there are many examples like this left, if any. But Jeancey has been reviewing the library like crazy lately, and I'll see about helping him out to make sure we can confirm every book appears properly in every namespace. Many apologies; it seems like something someone should've caught a long time ago.

Sooo, about the Daggerfall names ... retcon, right? We can just forget about the Daggerfall names? Aside from the appearance of "saliache" in Oblivion's The Adabal-a, nothing close to them has been mentioned in any game after Daggerfall (that I can find). That is, until ESO. Among other things, The Book of the Great Tree mentions the "Salache Elves", and Aurbic Enigma 4: The Elden Tree mentions the "Boiche Elves". Anyway, there's still no mention of "Moriche" I can find ...